


The Present

by achoo_gesundheit



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: F/M, Gift Giving, Graduation, M/M, general silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 18:22:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5596174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achoo_gesundheit/pseuds/achoo_gesundheit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“He’s leaving, and he doesn’t know-“ Bitty broke off awkwardly, making a vague hand gesture that Shitty interpreted as “He doesn’t know I’m madly in love with him and want to have all his hockey babies.” Bitty continued. “He needs to know.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Present

**Author's Note:**

> A present for Alice
> 
> (And also an unsuccessful attempt to take my mind off Hamilton)

Bitty stared forlornly at the socks. The socks, the last forgotten pair on the Samwell bookstore sale rack, stared back. Bitty picked them up, flipping them over to see the price tag - $23.00. Scoffing, he unceremoniously dumped the woolen monstrosities back onto the rack. He added socks to his mental list of rejected gift ideas, right underneath hockey tickets (which Jack could surely procure for himself), and the new Food52 baking book (which Bitty had starred to add to his own birthday wishlist). All of which left him nowhere. In three days, Jack would be graduating, and Bitty would have nothing of meaning to offer. Clenching his fists, Bitty stormed out of the bookstore, marching back across campus towards the Haus. It was time to take drastic measures. 

Shitty sat, naïve, ignorant, and innocent (perhaps not) in the living room, unaware of approaching drama. He absently stroked his mustache, dreaming lazy summer dreams of him and Lardo on a beach in Maine, when the sofa suddenly shifted violently beneath him as Bitty threw himself down onto the cushions. Shitty slowly turned to look at him. He had his arms crossed and was staring at Shitty with the same grim determination he had before every checking practice. Shitty raised an eyebrow. 

“There is absolutely nothing in this world that I can buy that will make an appropriate graduation present,” Bitty said.

Shitty shrugged. “Just buy me some beer, man.”

Bitty rolled his eyes, uncrossing his arms to flail helplessly across the sofa. “Not for you!” he wailed. “For Jack.”

The confusion surrounding this conversation began to clear, and Shitty relaxed back into the sofa. “You don’t have to get him anything, Bits.”

“I do though!” Bitty said. “He’s leaving, and he doesn’t know-“ Bitty broke off awkwardly, making a vague hand gesture that Shitty interpreted as “He doesn’t know I’m madly in love with him and want to have all his hockey babies.” Bitty continued. “He needs to know.”

Shitty blinked. “Sooooo, you want a gift that says,” he mimicked Bitty’s hockey-babies gesture, and Bitty nodded. “Well, with that kind of clarity it’s a wonder you’re having so much trouble,” he said. 

Bitty threw his hands up in the air, letting them hang off the armrest of the sofa in a pose clearly borrowed from Scarlet O’Hara. 

Shitty reigned in a laugh. “Hang tight, bro, lemme call Lardo,” he said, giving Bitty’s leg an affectionate pat. “Shit this important must be tag-teamed,” he said sagely.

Lardo arrived twenty minutes later, by which point Bitty had firmly embedded himself into the sofa cushions, one leg hanging numbly off the edge, shoe scraping the floor in a sad sweep every few seconds. 

“Christ,” she said. “He’s worse than you described.”

“Such distress bears no description, Lards,” Shitty told her from the sofa, where he had draped himself across from Bitty in a pose of mirrored melancholy. “We are inconsolable.”

Lardo rolled her eyes, kicking Shitty in the shin and poking Bitty roughly in the cheek, forcing his mouth to contort into a comic “oh” shape. “Get up, Bitty,” she said, removing her finger and ignoring Shitty’s pained protests behind her. “And get your shit together.”

Bitty grunted incoherently.

“Yeah, what he said,” Shitty said, jerking a thumb in his direction. 

“You’re pathetic,” Lardo told them.

“We’re moping,” Shitty countered.

“Yeah,” Bitty muttered. 

Lardo kicked Shitty again. “Put your pert little hockey butts in motion, gentlemen. It’s three days until graduation and I have a portfolio to finish.”

Clumsily, and with much reluctance, Shitty rose from the sofa, followed slowly by Bitty, who levered himself up with considerably more grace. 

“Excellent,” Lardo said, hands on her hips. “Now Bitty, what’s your budget?”

“Um,” Bitty said, bringing a hand up to rub his neck. “Fifty dollars?”

“Great,” Lardo encouraged. “And we want this gift to say… what?”

“Er,” Bitty started, wringing his hands in front of him. “I’d like it to be, you know, something sort of special, that says, um, well that says…”

Next to him Shitty was making some rather unsavory hand gestures, and Bitty turned scarlet.

Lardo smiled. “Get your wallet, Bits,” she said, heading for the door. “I have just the thing.”

Twenty minutes and a rather terrifying car ride later, Lardo kicked closed the driver’s side door and Bitty stumbled out onto the pavement from the backseat, legs shaking. Shitty climbed out from the passenger side and asked Lardo across the roof of the car, “Why, pray tell, have you brought us to the bus station?”

Bitty, unable to speak between the necessary gulps of calming air, nodded and pointed at Shitty in agreement. 

“Are you trying to tell us something?” Shitty asked. “Is our cause lost? Are we all moving to Connecticut?”

“Why in God’s name would we go to Connecticut?” Lardo asked.

Shitty shrugged, gesturing at his wallet. “Furthest ticket I can afford on such short notice. Give me a couple hours and we could make it Pennsylvania,” he said, winking. 

Lardo rolled her eyes. “The ticket isn’t for him, dumb-ass.”

Bitty, who had finally caught his breath, spoke up. “It’s for Jack?”

“On the money!” Lardo said, tapping her nose with one finger. 

Shitty slung an arm around Lardo’s shoulder. “Lardo, babe, Bitty is not on the money.” He paused. “You know who is on the money, though?”

“Shitty, I swear to God, if you start singing Hamilton again I will punch you and leave you here to die.” Bitty snorted, and Lardo whipped around to glare at him. “Oh don’t even,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s your fault he’s so obsessed to begin with.”

“It’s just so good,” Shitty whined, drawing out the word good and flinging himself at Lardo. “It makes me want to rewrite my thesis.”

“Shits, your thesis is already thirty-five pages longer than your original outline. Your ode to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s genius can wait until grad school,” Lardo said.

Shitty sighed dramatically. “I’m going to be a lawyer, Lards,” he said. “A lawyer, of all things! No, no, this is my last women’s and gender studies hurrah! Next year, I will be just another cis man in a badly cut suit.”

“With an undying love of transgressive musicals,” Bitty added.

“And an unhealthy propensity for overreaction,” Lardo mumbled, and Shitty pouted in response, chin resting sadly on Lardo’s shoulder. She reached up to ruffle his hair. “I’ll make sure we get you a good suit.” 

Shitty smiled, and Lardo smiled back, and Bitty watched awkwardly as they smiled at each other, before clearing his throat loudly. Lardo shoved Shitty’s head away a little too forcefully, sending him ricocheting back into the car. Shitty bounced, then winced, and Lardo rolled her eyes. 

“Enough chitchat, bros, we’re on a mission here,” she said, and turned about-face to march into the bus station. Bitty and Shitty followed obediently, jumping when the car let out a friendly honk as Lardo locked it over her shoulder. 

The terminal was blissfully empty, a precursor to the post-graduation tumult, and Lardo strolled confidently up to the ticket window, yanking Bitty to stand next to her. 

“We need one ticket from Providence to Samwell, please,” she told the clerk. 

“You wanna make that a round-trip, hon?” the woman behind the desk asked in a thick New England accent. 

“Nope,” Lardo told her. “One-way.”

The clerk raised an eyebrow. “From Providence to Samwell, not the other way round?”

“You got it.”

“Alright, whatever you say. What date you need it for?”

“Three weeks from Sunday,” Lardo said. “Early.”

“We got a bus leaving Providence at 7:35 that morning.”

“Perfect, we’ll take it.”

She nudged Bitty, who had been standing in rapt silence for the entire conversation, and he quickly fumbled to pull out his wallet. The clerk swiped his credit card before sliding it back through the window along with the bus ticket and a receipt. Bitty carefully stuck both into his wallet. 

“That it for ya?” The clerk asked. 

Lardo nodded. “Yup, that about does it. Thanks!” She jabbed Bitty again.

“Y-yeah, thank you very much, ma’am!” Bitty said, a little too loudly. 

Shitty sniggered, Lardo slapped a palm to her forehead, and the woman behind the window narrowed her eyes in confusion.

“Did you just call me ma’am?”

Shitty grabbed Bitty’s elbow in one hand and grabbed Lardo’s hand with the other to yank them both away from the window. “Thanks for everything there-” he glanced at her nametag, “Laurie. You’ve been a peach. We gotta go,” he said as they backed away. “But let’s do this again real soon, kay?” He turned around, walking towards the exit, shouting an exuberant, “Adieu!” over his shoulder as they pushed through the front doors.

When they had all piled back into the car, Shitty reached back from the front seat to whack Bitty upside the head. “You’ve been here over a year, man! You should know better!”

Bitty yelped in surprise, ducking too late and clutching his head. “I can’t just stop being polite!” He complained. “Besides you folks could use some manners up here!”

“Calling a woman ma’am isn’t seen as polite,” Lardo explained. “It’s like calling someone old.”

“Well that’s just silly,” Bitty scoffed.

“Wicked silly,” Shitty agreed.

“Welcome to New England,” Lardo said, pulling out of the parking lot and swinging the car violently back onto the thruway. 

When they screeched into a parking space at CVS shortly thereafter, Shitty shot Lardo a skeptical look. “I know I said-“ he made the hockey-babies gesture, “but I’m not sure condoms possesses the right kind of sentiment.” 

In the back seat, Bitty flushed bright red.

“Safe sex is always the right sentiment,” Lardo said seriously.

Shitty’s mouth opened and closed a few times, no words coming out. Bitty buried his face in his hands. 

Lardo rolled her eyes, cutting off the ignition. “Get out, dipshits, I promise we’re not buying condoms.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” Bitty said, relieved.

“That’s really more of a first anniversary gift,” Lardo said.

Shitty barked out a laugh, and Bitty groaned, reluctantly unbuckling his seatbelt to follow Lardo into the store. 

There were a few moments of confusion as she tracked down the right aisle, and then Bitty was pulled over to a rack full of disposable cameras. 

“Here,” Lardo said, tossing one behind her. Bitty fumbled for a second but managed to catch it, and Shitty clapped sarcastically next to him. 

“Ten out of ten for sticking the landing,” he chirped.

“Jack already has a camera,” Bitty said, ignoring Shitty. “A nice one.”

“The camera’s not the present,” Lardo explained.

“It’s not?” Bitty asked.

“Yeah, it’s not?” Shitty seconded.

“The gift,” Lardo said slowly, a wicked grin spreading across her face, “is what we put on it.”

Realization slowly began to dawn on the boys, a grin to match Lardo’s popping up on Shitty’s face. Bitty, on the other hand, gasped and threw the camera back. 

“I am not giving Jack dirty photos!” Bitty said, emphatically.

Shitty cackled, and Lardo shrugged. “They don’t have to be dirty,” she said. “They just have to mean something.” She tossed the camera back at him, and he caught it easier this time. “You’ve got twenty-seven shots.” She said seriously. “Make ‘em count.”

 --------------

Graduation Sunday dawned bright and sunny, the quad decked to the nines in Samwell colors, stages erected and podiums polished, ready for the event of the year. Bitty watched sleepily as Jack and Shitty straightened each other’s ties, pulling black robes on over clean pressed shirts and slacks, mortarboards perched rakishly on newly combed flows. Shitty gave Bitty a hug before he left, and Jack waved, happy, from the front porch before they made their way to the appropriate staging area. Bitty, Ransom, and Holster left some time later, finding seats as near the front as they could. Bitty could see elegantly dressed professors milling around, set apart from the sea of similarly clad students only by their marks of merit and colors of distinction.

Despite this, Bitty scanned the crowd desperately for any sign of Jack, wanting to see him as a student, here, with him, at Samwell, one last time. Bitty finally had to give up when the procession began, Provosts and Deans filing onto the stage. Bitty pulled out his phone and snapped a photo of the stage, quickly followed by a sunny selfie with Ransom and Holster, uploading both to Twitter in quick succession. He live-tweeted the entire ceremony, getting one particularly great picture of a flock of mortarboards flying through the air as the president announced the class of 2015 officially graduated. 

Afterwards, the graduates were quickly shuffled to their individual department graduations, and Bitty and the boys went back to the Haus, having been unable to procure tickets to either Shitty or Jack’s ceremony. Bitty paced the living room for an entire thirty seconds before marching into the kitchen.

By the time Shitty and Jack came stumbling back into the Haus, there were two pies cooling on the counter and a batch of cookies in the oven. Ransom and Holster had moved to loiter suspiciously close to the kitchen, occasionally doing a walk-by of the pies before Bitty shooed them away again. Ransom handed Shitty a beer, and Shitty began regaling them with the tale of how Morgan Wallis had tripped over her stilettos and knocked down Susan Van Owen who knocked down Travis Tully, leading to a chain reaction that felled the entire Sociology department like dominoes. 

“It was ‘swawesome, bro,” Shitty said. “I bet the soc kids are huddled together now, analyzing it’s meaning in relation to the greater societal macrocosm that is cause and effect.”

Jack laughed, and Bitty felt his heart skip a beat. He focused on not burning himself on the oven door. Jack said, “Shitty, your thesis is done, man, relax,” before he was suddenly next to Bitty, peeking over his shoulder at the tray of cookies. “Smells good.”

Bitty allowed himself a moment, just a second really, to compose himself, before whirling around, hot tray in hand, forcing Jack to leap back a step. “These cookies are for your parents, Mr. Zimmerman, so don’t you lay a finger on them!”

“Hey, I’m the one who graduated,” Jack said, smiling. 

“Your parents just paid for four years of your education, Jack, and they had to sit through two ceremonies, one of which was led by the chair of the history department, for Pete’s sake. The folks deserve a medal. Cookies are the least I can do,” Bitty said all in a rush, quickly moving the hot cookies to a cooling rack and traying up more. 

Jack laughed. “Alright, alright.” He gave Bitty’s shoulder a pat. “I’m gonna go change,” he said, walking towards the door. “Is the pie for me, at least?” he asked as he passed.

Bitty’s cheeks flushed, and he stared determinedly down at the counter. “It’s your favorite,” he said.

“Thanks, Bittle,” Jack said, softer, and Bitty dared a glance up. That slow smile was quirking Jack’s mouth up at the corners, and Bitty melted like a snowball on the summer pavement. They stood there, smiling, for a beat too long, until Jack tugged awkwardly at his tie, gesturing up the stairs. “Gonna change now.”

Bitty nodded, flapping a hand in a shooing motion. “Go, out of my kitchen!” He shouted at his back as he turned, “And you keep your hands off these cookies!”

When Jack was gone, Bitty pulled the disposable camera out of his pocket and snapped a lopsided picture of himself next to the pies waiting on the counter.

Jack and Shitty went to dinner with their parents (Jack laden with cookies he was firmly instructed not to touch), and Bitty and the team prepared the Haus for one final blowout celebration. Holster hauled a keg into the newly cleaned kitchen, and Chowder and Lardo wobbled dangerously on ladders in the living room to string up crooked banners and half-hearted crepe paper. Bitty supervised the proceedings, putting the finishing touches on the numerous dishes he’d prepared for the night. He firmly ignored the stacks of packed boxes labeled “Jack Zimmerman – Providence” littered around the Haus. 

When their graduates returned, the crowd erupted into cheers, and alcohol was quickly and efficiently distributed. Nursey cranked the music up, and Shitty laughed an elated laugh, throwing an arm around Lardo and pulling her out to dance. 

Jack shook his head, beer held loosely in one hand, before catching Bitty’s eye. He smiled, gesturing around at the general mayhem surrounding them, eyes questioning.

Bitty shrugged, and nodded. Jack chuckled, and began weaving his way through the mob, but was stopped at nearly every interval to be congratulated by a teammate, a friend, or a fellow major. He talked to everyone, polite and thanking, shaking hands and returning slaps on the back. By the time he made it to Bitty’s corner of the room, they were six songs into Nursey’s dance mix and Bitty had finished his first beer. 

Jack crowded against him, leaning down to shout in his ear. “Thank you!”

“I’m sorry! I know you don’t really like parties!” Bitty shouted back, aware that if he leaned any closer to Jack his lips would collide with the side of his face.

“I like being here!” Jack said. “I like being with friends!” He paused, still hovering too close. “With you,” he said, almost too quiet for Bitty to catch. 

Even as it was, Bitty was sure he’d heard him wrong, but Jack just laughed again, spotting Shitty near the sofa, miming a rope-pull and shimmying towards him. 

“Looks like you’re needed!” Bitty yelled.

Jack nodded. “Talk later?”

Bitty nodded anxiously, but had to laugh as Jack was yanked backwards against Shitty, who began waltzing them offbeat around the living room. Bitty watched them for a second, Jack as happy as he’d ever seen him. He drained the last sips of his beer and went to find something stronger. 

By the time the party began to wind down, Bitty was drunk. Sloppily, excitedly, and happily drunk. Jack found him on the porch leaning heavily against Lardo, who was far from sober herself, giggling madly. They only giggled harder when Jack approached, and he saw Lardo elbow Bitty hard in the ribs, making him topple off the porch step. Lardo began snickering so hard she fell over, and Jack left to find backup. He returned with Shitty a few moments later to find that neither Bitty nor Lardo had moved, but had taken to kicking blindly behind them in an attempt to knock their shoes off. Lardo had already lost one. Shitty shook his head, setting his beer down on the railing before bending down to scoop Lardo up. She flailed for a minute before settling, arms looping up and around his neck, head coming to rest lightly against his chest.

“You’re the shit, Shits,” she murmured enthusiastically, and Shitty smiled.

“Back at ya, bro,” Shitty said.

Jack handed Shitty her shoe, and Shitty whispered a quick, “Thanks, man,” before carrying Lardo back into the Haus. Bitty watched the exchange from his porch step, heart beating valiantly against his ribcage. 

“Can you walk?” Jack asked.

Bitty nodded, levering himself up to a sitting position, feet placed firmly on the grass in front of him. 

Jack waited.

Bitty closed his eyes, imagined straightening his legs, lifting his body off the step.

Jack waited. 

“Am I standing yet?” Bitty asked.

“Nope,” Jack replied.

“On second thought,” Bitty said, leaning back against the step behind him. “I think I’m pretty comfy here.”

Jack sighed, turned around so his back was to Bitty, and bent down to a squat. “Come on,” he said, sticking his arms out. “Time for bed.”

Bitty opened his eyes and was momentarily paralyzed by the sight of Jack’s ass hovering in front of his face, before his words registered. “I’m ruining your night,” Bitty said sadly.

“You’re really not,” Jack said softly, looking back over his shoulder. “Party’s mostly over anyway.”

Bitty glanced around and realized he was right, just a few stragglers left loafing in the Haus, the frogs asleep in a pile on the sofa, the stereo turned low and soothing. 

“Come on,” Jack said again, and this time Bitty reached up to place his hands on Jack’s shoulders. Jack’s arms came back to loop underneath his legs, and then Bitty was being lifted into the air. He panicked, quickly tightening his arms around Jack’s neck, and Jack coughed, leaning back until Bitty was dangerously close to falling off. “Bittle,” he choked out. “Loosen up a bit, eh?”

Mortified, Bitty rapidly released his death-grip, letting his arms drape limply around Jack’s shoulders. “Sorry,” he muttered into Jack’s shirt. 

“No problem,” Jack said. Slowly, he took the steps up the porch and into the Haus, weaving through party detritus and making his way up the stairs. Bitty, drunk and tired and all of a sudden overwhelmed with the sensation of being close to Jack, nearly fell asleep on the way. Jack carefully wedged the door to Bitty’s room open with his foot, and turned around to drop Bitty gently on his bed. 

Bitty let his head sink back into the pillows, already curling onto his side to sleep, when he felt Jack’s breath near his ear for the second time that night.

“Thank you,” Jack whispered. 

A second later, Bitty heard the door snick closed and he pulled the camera from his pocket. He wound it up and took picture number twenty-six, before tossing it next to the bed and letting the persistent lull of sleep take over. 

Jack moved out the next day. There were no heartfelt conversations, no revelations. Bitty was hung-over and Jack was somber, and an air of melancholy had descended on the recently raucous Haus. Jack’s room upstairs was empty, save for the furniture he left for Chowder. The U-Haul parked outside was full, the hatch locked and ready for the two hour drive down to Providence. 

Shitty and Lardo sat quietly on the porch railing, feet dangling and banging against the struts. Bitty leaned in the protective shade of the doorway, tense and teary-eyed, disposable camera clenched firmly in his fist, as Jack said his final farewells. Jack wrapped his arms around Bitty, hugging him firmly, and Bitty returned the embrace. Before Jack pulled away, Bitty slipped the camera into his jacket pocket, hoping he wouldn’t find it until he was miles away. There were words exchanged that Bitty wouldn’t remember a moment later, and then the driver’s side door of the truck was slamming closed and they were watching Jack pull around the corner and away from the Haus, and Samwell, and Bitty. 

Later that night, just after dusk, when the streetlights began to flicker on in the distance, Lardo plopped herself down next to Bitty on the porch step, a sobering recollection of the previous night’s revelry. Lardo let her head drop onto Bitty’s shoulder, and Bitty wrapped an arm around her waist. 

“You alright, Bits?” Lardo asked, quietly.

“No,” Bitty said. “Are you?”

“Nope.” Lardo said. “Not one bit.”

Bitty’s eyes cut down to where Lardo’s hands were clenched in her lap. “When does Shitty leave?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Right.”

Dusk turned to twilight turned to night, and a summer breeze marked their vigil, stars winking on one by one. Shitty appeared once, wordlessly taking off his sweatshirt and handing it to Lardo. He appeared again a moment later with a blanket, laying it snugly across their shoulders, before heading back inside. The screen door of the Haus closed with a smack, and Bitty and Lardo were left with the certain silence of subdued summer nights, and the still and wretched sadness of goodbyes. 

\--------------

Jack’s apartment in Providence was furnished but sparse, and he made his way through it to the bedroom, tossing his jacket onto the bare mattress. He switched on a lamp, bathing the room in harsh white fluorescence, and kicked his shoes off. After texting his parents to let them know he’d arrived safely, Jack swung himself onto the unmade bed, too tired to bother unpacking his sheets. He balled up his jacket to form a makeshift pillow and shoved it beneath his head, then sat back up abruptly when he felt something solid jabbing into the back of his skull. He unfolded the jacket and pulled a disposable camera out of one pocket. There was a piece of tape stuck over the viewfinder, with the words “DEVELOP ME” written on it in neat block letters, and underneath that “All yours, if you want it.” Jack blinked at it, checked his watch, yanked his shoes back on, and asked Siri to find the nearest pharmacy. 

At the CVS three blocks away, Jack fidgeted anxiously while a bored looking teenager processed the film. After the first fifteen minutes of pacing, she insisted Jack “go, like, shop or something, cuz you’re creeping me out, man.” Jack ran a frustrated hand through his hair and busied himself wandering aimlessly through the store, occasionally picking up items, reading the labels, and setting them back down. Management was beginning to get nervous, and an employee started following him down every aisle. Finally, after Jack had examined every color of nail polish several times over, a bland voice came over the loudspeaker, asking for Mr. Zimmerman at the photo desk. Jack paid, somewhat frantically, for his prints, before beating a breakneck pace back to his apartment. Once safely behind his locked front door, he pulled the envelope from his pocket and sat down heavily in a kitchen chair. 

The first picture was of a nose, then another of just a forehead, another of the left side of a familiar looking face. Finally, there was Bitty, smiling, bright and joyful, on the front porch of the Haus. The angle was awkward, the composition a little crooked, and Jack laughed. The next picture was Bitty again, in the kitchen, followed by Bitty with a pie, followed by Bitty in the living room, Bitty at the rink, Bitty on the quad, Bitty, Bitty, Bitty. Jack flipped quickly through the stack, a smile tugging firmly at his mouth. 

After the first spate of selfies, however, came a different picture. It was still Bitty, sitting on the front step of the Haus, his head cocked to the side to rest against a post in the railing, staring out at the road. The photo had been taken by someone standing behind him – probably from the doorway of the Haus, given the angle. It was almost night, and the exposure was all wrong. It was too dark, just the outline of Bitty’s shoulders illuminated by the soft light of the street lamps. 

Jack stared at it, something familiar seeming to settle in his stomach, and he wondered who had taken the picture. 

He reluctantly flipped to the next one, and choked out a laugh at the sight. Whoever had taken it had managed to get their finger over the lens, obscuring all but an ear of what Jack assumed was Bitty’s face. The next picture was all of Bitty, mid-sentence, then Lardo looking confusedly into the camera, followed by Bitty bent over, cracking up. Jack glanced at the clock. He’d been gone six hours, and with every passing moment away from Samwell, he was finding it harder and harder to breathe. 

He made his way through the rest of the photos, Bitty’s face staring out at him from every one. Jack paused again at the last picture in the stack, the only one to not feature a person. It was of his diploma, bus ticket sticking out of the folder that he’d thrown into the nearest open box. Glancing at the clock on the kitchen wall, Jack decided that maybe it wasn’t too late to unpack after all. 

\--------------

Bitty and Lardo had decided to spend their summer refurbishing the Haus. No one could claim there wasn’t a need, and with Shitty and his legal loopholes gone, the Haus’s status as an inhabitable property was once again in question. The replacement of the oven (a birthday present from Jack) had gone a long way to making the kitchen fully functional, and they had three months to tackle the rest. It was going to be a busy summer, and both Lardo and Bitty were planning to take full advantage of the distraction. 

Thus, with broken hearts and swaggering delusions of confidence, the Tuesday after graduation found Bitty and Lardo hauling the wretched green sofa to its final resting place at the Samwell trash disposal facility. They had just managed to wrangle it through the front door when a car door slammed on the street in front of them, causing Bitty to jump and drop the sofa, leaving what would be a permanent dent in the front porch. Lardo began shouting a steady stream of obscenities, while Bitty, whose back was to the street, attempted in vain to lift the sofa out of the crater it’d embedded itself in. 

“Remind me again why we’re doing this ourselves?” Bitty shouted, crouched down near an armrest, face pressed unpleasantly against the stained fabric. “There will be literal flocks of strapping young hockey lads here in August.” Bitty strained to lift the upholstered monstrosity. “We really didn’t think this through, Lardo.”

There was silence from the other side of the couch. 

“Lardo?” Bitty said, abandoning his attempts and standing up. “Have you fallen into the couch crater of despair?”

From the other armrest, still in the shadow of the Haus, Lardo was smirking. 

Bitty placed a hand on his hip, cocking it out to the side. “And what about this predicament is funny to you, Miss Thang?”

Lardo shrugged. “Figured I’d let the strapping young hockey lad take over.”

“I have been called many things, but I think that’s a first.”

Bitty whirled around violently, tripping over the dent in the porch and pitching into a pair of very familiar, very muscular arms. 

Beaming, Jack set him back on his feet, letting his hands slide down to take hold of Bitty’s. 

Bitty glanced over his shoulder at Lardo, who waved at Jack, winked, and disappeared inside. Bitty turned back around to stare.

“Hi,” Jack said. 

“Jack,” Bitty breathed, and then Jack was crushing them together, arms wrapped around his back, one hand tangled in his hair. Bitty let his face press into the cotton of Jack’s t-shirt, hands sliding up his back to grasp at his shoulders. 

“I missed you,” Jack said into Bitty’s hair, and Bitty laughed.

“You’ve hardly been gone twenty four hours!”

“Still missed you,” Jack murmured. 

“Did you get my present?” Bitty asked, tilting his head so he could see Jack’s face. Jack’s smile was radiant, and Bitty felt like he might float off the porch at any moment. 

“It was-” Jack started, and shook his head. “It meant a lot to me.”

“Your ticket wasn’t for another three weeks,” Bitty said.

Jack nodded. “I changed it. I couldn’t wait.”

Bitty wanted to scream, demand an answer, fold himself around Jack and never let go. He settled for, “And?”

“I want it.” Jack said. “This.” He leaned closer, and Bitty felt his breath ghost across his mouth. “You.”

Rising up onto his tiptoes, Bitty pressed a chaste kiss to Jack’s lips. He felt delight bubble up in his chest, and he couldn’t reign in his smile, lips curving awkwardly against Jack’s. Then Jack was smiling back, and they were both laughing, noses smashed haphazardly together. 

“Um, Bitty?”

“Hm?” Bitty turned around to look at where Jack had begun pointing to find Lardo in the window, making Shitty’s favorite hockey-babies gesture. Her phone was propped on the windowsill next to her, Shitty’s name printed across the top of the Facetime app, his pixelated form bobbing in and out of the frame as he did a celebratory dance from Cambridge.

Bitty flushed red, and turned back around to find that Jack’s complexion matched his own. Grabbing his hand, Bitty dragged Jack over the sofa and into the Haus, walking straight past the chirps of Lardo and Shitty, up the stairs, and into his room. He locked the door behind them, and turned to smile shyly at Jack. “So,” he said quickly, running a hand through his already mussed hair. “Where were we?”

In the living room, Lardo laughed as Shitty spun circles around his apartment, crowing triumphantly. She ignored the way his voice sounded wrong on the phone, tinny and empty, and focused on the way his smile made his eyes crinkle in the corners, the way he threw his head back to laugh, the way he looked at her like he could see right through her. When his celebrations finally died down, Lardo’s smile was slipping. 

“I miss you, bro,” Shitty said, and Lardo nodded, shaking her head against the tears pricking the corners of her eyes. “I got your present, by the way,” he added, holding up the condom box Lardo had stuffed into his sneakers the morning before.

Lardo shrugged, and Shitty raised his eyebrows. 

“I have to say,” he continued, opening the box and tipping it upside down. “The emptiness eludes me.”

Reaching into her pocket, Lardo pulled out one of the condom packets, twirling it between her fingers for Shitty to see. “Decided to hold onto them,” she said, trying for nonchalant. Shitty raised another questioning brow, and Lardo shrugged again. “Couldn’t have you using them with anyone else.”

Her meaning took a minute to descend on Shitty, before his eyes got wide and he began scrambling off camera.

“Shitty?” Lardo asked, quietly.

“Bro- babe- Lards, I gotta go,” Shitty said, from off-screen. 

Lardo felt her stomach sink. “Go?”

Shitty’s face appeared again suddenly, too close to the camera. “Yeah, dude, gotta go get a train ticket back to Samwell,” he said urgently. “Our first time is destined to be magical and I’m not about to do it over fucking Skype.” 

Relief swept over Lardo and she laughed, long and joyful.

Shitty grinned. “I will see you in like,” he glanced at his watch, “three hours. And then we are fucking doing this.” 

Lardo bit her bottom lip, leaning over so Shitty had a clear view down her tank top. “Promise?”

“Fucking- two and a half hours, tops.” Shitty ran a hand through his hair and then disappeared from view as he began searching for his keys, phone aimed at the floor.

“Shitty?”

His face popped in frame again. “Yeah?”

“I think I love you,” Lardo said, serious.

Shitty let out a slow breath. “Yeah,” he said. “I love you, too.” The words hung in the air for a second. “See you soon,” Shitty finally said, and then the call was ended. 

A smile forced its way onto Lardo’s face, and stayed there.

There were discussions to be had, plans to be made, inevitable departures to witness, and most certainly more tears to be shed. For now, though, in the comfort of the crumbling Haus, Lardo and Bitty would revel in the gift of right now, the staggering and immediate euphoria of the present.


End file.
